


Do Not Keep to Yourself the Secret of your Heart

by Sproutling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Feelings, Gen, Good Big Brother Dean, Heart-to-Heart, Protective Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sproutling/pseuds/Sproutling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What the- what are you even- <i>what?</i>”</p><p>It had been a long time since Dean last heard his brother sound so unintelligent.</p><p>“Cas told me; said he hasn’t heard you pray since before we went to purgatory.  You said everyday.”</p><p>Or </p><p>Dean confronts Sam over a broken habit and Cas is proud of his boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Keep to Yourself the Secret of your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime in the nebulous, possibly-didn’t-happen period of season 9 where Dean, Sam and Cas are in the bunker together all domestic-like and no one’s pissed off. Let’s pretend. Also took some liberties with Cas and his angel powers, nothing big, just go with it :)
> 
> Title from the poem _The Gardener XXIV: Do Not Keep to Yourself_ by Rabindranath Tagore.

It was a flippant response to something Castiel said that started it.  Sitting together in the bunker’s library, Dean had only been listening with half an ear while Cas distracted himself from reading by remarking on the oddness of being an inbetween angel-human; of food and its lack of appeal, of what he could and could no longer hear.  Of how prayers were still dinging off his holy antenna.

“You catch Sam every night then?” Dean had said, only half interested in the response, focussed on cataloguing; he’d found a box very similar to the one in which he’d discovered the Men of Letters’ magazine collection and he had high hopes for this one.

“Catch Sam doing what?”

“Talking with the big man,” Dean said absently, hopeful eyes scanning beneath an old newspaper.  It took a little while for a response to come which Dean had come to expect when conversing with the angel.  Trying to puzzle out the non-literal words took time. 

“I have not heard Sam pray.”

It took a minute or two for that to truly register.  He really wasn’t paying much attention and Castiel has stated it as if telling Dean that he was being ridiculous and pigs couldn’t _actually_ fly.

“What, like today? This week?”

“No.  Not since before our time in purgatory.” 

Dean was staring at him now, gaping as he tried to fathom how long ago that had been.  How long ago Sam had apparently given up on praying.  How long ago Sam had stopped believing in something bigger than themselves.  Cas was watching Dean closely now, though Dean didn’t think for a second that Castiel, as an angel – and he would always be an angel, even as a human, because being an angel was part of who Castiel _was_ – didn’t grasp the gravity of what they were discussing.

“But that... and he hasn’t prayed since then?  Not _once_?”  Cas shook his head.  “Maybe you just can’t hear him.  You wouldn’t, if he was praying to someone else, right?”

“Perhaps, if I was some distance away.  But this close I would hear it no matter who he was praying to.”

“But he told me,” Dean argued, “He said he prayed every day.”

“When did he say that?”

Dean didn’t respond.  He couldn’t, because he knew exactly why his brother would have stopped praying since then.  Seven years ago outside a church, when the idea of angels had been ridiculous to Dean and a source of faith for Sam... it seemed like another lifetime now.  So many awful, evil things had happened to his little brother since then, any one of those things could have been the final nail in the coffin of Sam’s faith in a higher power.

Cas watched contemplatively as Dean mulled over the new information, watched as Dean’s face filled with resolve and the edge of anger that was not unfamiliar in the hunter and Cas knew was directed at himself.  Cas watched Dean get up and leave the box he’d been sorting half emptied on the table, striding from the library with purpose, and Cas thoughtfully returned to his reading.

 

* * *

 

Sam was kneeling on the floor beside his bed when Dean got to his brother’s room.  The younger man was reaching his eternally gangly arm underneath, trying to reach something and failing, giving up with a huff against the dusty carpet and blowing a puff of it into his own face.  Knowing he was reacting far too strongly to what he’d learned, Dean couldn’t manage to stop himself.

“Praying before bed Sammy?”

Sam shot a glare over his shoulder, arm still extended beneath the bed and looking painful as he slowly withdrew it.  He stood and sat himself on the edge instead, giving up on whatever was underneath and diving into the half full duffel bag beside him.

“Haha,” came the sarcasm from the bag, “Why, you wanna join in?”

“Sure, you start,” Dean said, trying to keep the confrontational edge to a minimum and sure he wasn’t succeeding.  Sam looked up, setting aside whatever he’d been looking for, and favoured Dean with an incredibly odd look that fell somewhere between baffled, disgusted and disconcerted.

“Wait, what are we doing?”

“We’re gonna pray.  You first.”

Sam watched Dean as if waiting for the punchline and to be honest, Dean couldn’t blame him.  Even he knew at this point there had to have been a better way of going about this.  Eventually Sam got tired of staring at Dean like he’d gone insane.

“Seriously Dean, what do you want?”

“To know why you stopped praying.”

Sam didn’t look any more enlightened by this, only more disturbed that the topic of conversation had strayed so far from anything remotely normal for the two of them to be discussing.  Which, Dean knew, for them, was really saying something.  His response was a long time coming.

“What the- what are you even- _what_?”

It had been a long time since Dean last heard his brother sound so unintelligent.

“Cas told me; said he hasn’t heard you pray since before we went to purgatory.  You said everyday.”

Dean could see Sam struggling to remember when he’d said that.  When he did remember he looked shocked.

“Dean, that was _years_ ago.  That was before we knew about... any of it,” Sam’s arms flailed around a bit, trying to encompass how much they’d done and seen since then.  Dean couldn’t help wondering if his baby brother would ever grow into his long skinny limbs.  “It’s completely different now! And you can talk; you didn’t even pray back then, let alone now.”

“I’ve prayed,” Dean said quietly.  Sam fell silent, Dean doubted he was even breathing.  He looked dumbstruck and just stared.  “I prayed to Cas, when you were doing those trials-”

“That doesn’t count-”

“It sure as hell does,” Dean barked.

“Not when it’s the angel equivalent of a phone call, that’s not the same-”

“You think that’s what that was?” Dean cut him off, angry and frustrated and hurting and he wasn’t sure which of them he was hurting for.  Maybe both of them.  “You think I prayed to Cas to, what, say hi? I prayed because I was scared dammit. You were burning up and getting paler every day and trying to hide it from me.  We’d barely started and it was supposed to be on me and there you were suffering in front of me and I couldn’t do a thing. I was asking for him to help you.”

Sam looked the way he did when he’d been punched in the stomach, winded and shocked, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.  His mouth opened and closed a couple times and Dean felt the first twinges of selfconcsiousness, but this seemed too important for him to be distracted by his own embarrassment from.

“Why?”

Dean rolled his eyes at him, flopping onto the bed beside him at the same time. 

“What do you mean ‘why’ Knucklehead? To keep you from getting hurt?”  he couldn’t say the words _to keep you from dying_ because it had come to close to that.

“No but, why ask Cas to help me? There wasn’t anything Cas could’ve done.” Sam was giving him an adorable, scrunched-up, confused look and Dean shoved him with his shoulder in one of the many ways he’d always said _you’re an idiot and I love you_ without having to put it into words.

“Well I didn’t know that at the time, Genius, but that isn’t the point.  It wasn’t the reason I prayed – well, not the whole reason; I _was_ hoping Cas would be able to fix everything with magic-“ Sam rolled his eyes and Dean poked him in the ribs until he squeaked.  “but I prayed because... I guess because I needed to.  I needed to feel like someone was listening and would help, somehow.”

Sam’s eyes had dropped and he was looking intently at his hands in his lap.

“Why did you used to pray?” Dean asked him quietly.

Sam shrugged and clicked his fingernails against each other once, twice.  “I s’pose because I thought someone was listening.” Dean’s forehead scrunched up in consternation and, for once, Sam read him perfectly. “I knew I could tell you anything and you always listened,” Sam said, like it was one of the incontrovertible facts of the universe; Sam could tell Dean anything and Dean would always listen to Sam.  Dean relaxed.  “It was... I dunno... sometimes it was like talking to Mom,” Sam continued thoughtfully, not seeing Dean twitch but moving to face Dean a little more as if unconsciously aware of the reaction. 

“And other times?” Dean prompted softly, not wanting to break the stillness that had fallen on the room.

“It was... it was like Pastor Jim used to say; like there was someone listening who wanted the best for us.  More than anything else, wanted us to be happy and safe.”

They both fell quiet after that and Dean remembered Jim saying similar things to him, encouraging him not to give up on prayer and God and angels.  He had quickly relegated religion along with Santa and the Easter Bunny to the pile of childish, fluffy, harmless things that didn’t exist in their real world of vengeful ghosts, vampires and werewolves.  He remembered little Sammy listening with rapt attention and big doe eyes before his baby brother shut them tight and whispered prayers for their dad to come back safe.  He remembered, on those nights, how much praying helped Sam sleep.

“The things we’ve seen...” Dean trailed off for a second and Sam sighed and nodded beside him. “The things we used to think were complete bull and then discovered were real and weren’t like we thought they would be and, you know, wear fucking trenchcoats-”

A snigger that became a little laugh escaped Sam before he could stop it and Dean felt like everything would always work out okay eventually. 

“Who’s to say you weren’t right all along?” Dean finished and Sam’s smiling face turned startled like that was the last thing he expected Dean to say, and, to be fair, it probably was.  “It’s just a feeling I guess,” he continued, and if anything Sam looked more shocked at Dean putting any stock in ‘feelings’.  “But... I dunno... maybe just, don’t give up on the whole thing just yet.”

Dean felt like reminding Sam to blink, and was about to do so and completely destroy the chick-flick vibe, when Sam spoke.

“Have you?” He asked, so softly Dean nearly missed it despite sitting right beside him.  “D’you still...”

Dean sighed but thought it through.

“Not in a kneel-by-the-bed-and-make-it-rhyme kinda way.  But honestly, I think there hasn’t been a day in... well, ever, that I haven’t silently asked for something from someone out there.”

Sam was looking at him quizzically.  “Asked for something?” he muttered.  Dean just stared at him, looked pointedly right at him.

_Keep him safe, Please God let him be okay, let him be alive, make him call me, let him know I’m here, please keep him breathing, don’t let him see me like this, let him sleep a bit longer, bring him back, please just let him be okay, let him know I’m here, let him know he’s not alone._

Sam seemed to realise, his eyes clearing from puzzlement to realisation to knowing, understanding; whether because he knew the words Dean was thinking – had thought, _often_ – or because he had thought them himself.  Or both.

“Oh,” he exhaled.

“Yeah,” Dean breathed.

They sat together for a little while after that, and when Dean stood to leave he noticed the flicker of an expression on Sam’s face that had been a daily occurance for teenage Sammy.  It was the forlorn I’m-an-adult-and-shouldn’t-want-hugs-anymore look that Sam had been dreadful at hiding as a kid and that, Dean hoped, he would never completely grow out of.  So instead of going directly to the door Dean stopped in front of his brother and pulled him close, arms enclosing broad shoulders, curling his own forward, remembering a time he could completely shield his brother from the world this way.  Standing in front of Sam while he sat on the edge of the bed, feeling those gangly arms wrap around his waist, he imagined he still could.  Either way he would never stop trying to. 

 

* * *

 

A few nights later found Dean sitting across the kitchen table from Cas, both needing something in their empty stomachs before bed.  The two of them and Sam had stayed awake long enough to find more answers than they were actually looking for in the library, along with the beginnings of sleep deprivation, and Sam had ruled sleep more necessary than food where the other two hadn’t. Hence, Sam presumably being in bed while Dean and Cas tiredly spooned up reheated soup. 

Dean noticed the moment when Cas, tiredly focussed on not spilling anything, cocked his head very slightly and looked away as if caught by a sound.  He definitely looked like he was listening and ordinarily Dean might be concerned.  But he’d seen the looks Sam still cast him every so often, days after their heart-to-heart, and the way he would sometimes stare off into space looking like he was trying hard to puzzle something out. 

And when Cas met his eyes across the table looking serene and almost... proud? Dean shook his head with quirked lips and slurped his soup obnoxiously.  And hoped.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, because I’m a hobbit, have this little mathom and help me party! Leave me some love if you liked it and wanna squeal about the fact that Season 11 starts tonight... in Aus... but I wish you S11 wherever you are! (TV land gave me a birthday present! *pets TV, _gooood TV_ *)


End file.
